Language Teaching Studies Blog Site at the University of Oregon

Faculty spotlight Deborah Healey

Could you tell us a little bit about your connection to the LTS program?

I have taught in the LTS program and online teacher education courses from the American English Institute since I came to the University of Oregon in 2009. Appropriate use of technology in teaching is a passion of mine. I’ve done workshops in a wide range of countries and contexts to encourage teachers to understand the technology available to them – and what might be available in future – so that teachers can make good choices about the resources they use.

Could you briefly describe the course you teach?

I teach the Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) Workshop in Fall and Winter terms. The courses are designed to give a sense of ways that technology can be used to achieve teaching and learning goals, both as an LTS student and as a language teacher. Aside from our learning management system, Canvas, the CALL course uses freely-available resources that are accessible outside the UO so that LTS grads will be able to take what they’ve worked on and use it wherever they go.

What is the best part about your work?

I greatly enjoy the way that the different aspects of my professional life fit together. Currently, I’m co-teaching a massive open online course (MOOC) with Jeff Magoto and Elizabeth Hanson-Smith. We co-developed the two 5-week courses that have been taken by over 50,000 people in the past two years. I’ve also developed and taught several fully online courses to English language teachers around the world, and I’ve been privileged to give workshops internationally as an Academic Specialist with the US Department of State. My face-to-face teaching has benefitted from all of this. Sometimes I can see the results of the work, as with the Gabon Oregon Center project. I did teacher training in Gabon with Keli Yerian with the goal of enabling Gabonese teachers to become teacher trainers. This June, that paid off with the opening of the Laboratoire de Langue in Libreville, offering general English and teacher training courses and staffed by Gabonese teachers. We were also able to provide an internship opportunity to 2015 LTS alum Tiffany Van Pelt in Gabon, where she is right now.